Tuesday, November 01, 2005

I've got lots on my mind today so I apologize in advance for the rambling.

First and foremost, I would like to thank everybody for wasting a few minutes a day reading this thing I call a poker blog. My page views have been trending up over the past few weeks and I appreciate everybody stopping by. A quick shout out to Mr Rini'spokerfilter. There is a lot of good stuff that he puts out there.

I have updated my stats up on the upper right so you can see that I barely finished above water this month. If we were playing "one of these numbers doesn't belong" with my monthly stats, all fingers would point to my ring play. That bad ring number was the more or less the result of one day.... last Saturday... Last Saturday was my first 4 digit losing day and I wasn't able to do a couple of things... First, I couldn't quit (I'll explain later)... and second, I was definitely tilting...

Why couldn't I quit... Part of playing poker is the current playing conditions which leads me to table selection. What is the optimal stats for sitting at a table? Another words, what kind of players and table averages are you looking for. I guess I haven't found the right formula. After a quick winning hit and run on Saturday morning, I sat back down during baby Wonka's nap. There was a mixture of good and bad players and the table average was between 25-33 on the VPIP (flop) and around 6-8% on the preflop raises. To me, this is/was the optimal table to sit at. I think I'm going to put more thought into it and post a bigger post later. Anyway, after the following:

KQs (clubs) in a raised pot with all clubs on the flop lost to 83 when they got a boat on the turn. I never even thought of putting this guy on 83 (he wasn't a maniac type player)...QJ in BB with 2 pair lost to 4 card straight.KK and JJ hitting sets only to lose to straightsQQ in multi raised preflop pot lost to A9s when ace came on river... he had no part of the board before that... J887A..AJ losing to Q2 suited (who was out of position).. with J high flop getting flush on river.AT.. when I pushed against a 56%er on a 2KKK4 boatd... he had AJAJs and 99 both lost to rockets (aka falling in love with your hand).

So call me a fraud or a hypcocrite; but apparently, I chose not to read what I write.. Can you guess what my biggest losing hand was.... yep... KQ... this time it was at least it was suited. So is this irony funny haha or funny peculiar... needless to say, I wasn't laughing.. I'll have to work on that.

To make matters worse, I watched someone play 100% of the flops for 11 hands and win almost $1000... He must of had terrific starting hands you say? How about... A6, KQ, K2, J9s, J8, TT, 65s and 65o... he then didn't play 2 hands and then left the table.... who can blame him. So that couple with my beats (not necessarily bad) put me on tilt and I problably played bad poker.

So now, I'm not sure what the optimal table is to sit at.. I am going to watch this closer. Anybody have any thoughts on this one?

This now brings me to my plans for November. After a long conversation with Mrs Wonka, my poker playing will be decreasing. The plan is to play 4 days a week or 20 hours, which ever comes first. Here are some mostly meaningless stats... I have played 435 days of poker and here is the ranking by day:

These numbers don't include the big tournament wins that would possibley skew the results.

So I can see my days being Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Sunday... We'll see how it goes. Most likely, I could never reach 20 hours in 4 days; but that is just sort of baseline number that I have originally set... subject to change. Also during our little chat, I told that I would start withdrawing. I need to get/stay at a comfortable level to be playing at 15/30 which in my estimation is 400 BB... The thought being if she can start seeing some of this money, she will be more tolerant to me playing. My plan is to put it some sort of "capital" plan... maybe for something like a big screen TV.. finish basement... kids room.. etc.

One thing that this might help is that I have recently done some quick hit and runs if say my gain was $150 or more. I now will not be doing this. I am going to try to play a predetermined set of time. Because as it was, if I won my $150 or more, I quit... but if I was losing, I would keep playing to try and recoup... There is 0bviously a mismatch there and I hope to rectify that. Case in point. I played yesterday and made my $150 in a relatively short amount of time where I normally would have quit; but the table conditions were still good and I continued to play and by the end of my session, I had banked a $482 session. My hopes is that I will see more of those to help offset some of those unavoidable bad days.

My plan is to continue ring and tourney play with perhaps a heavier waiting on some multis.

6 comments:

It's sort of a glass half empty/half full thing, but you'll eventually get pretty numb to the -$1,000+ days. They happen. It's a shame that many of the blogs of people playing mid/high limits are useless in this regard, but anyone playing 15/30 and up encounters their fair share of days in which they drop well over a grand, each and every month.

I think the "optimal" conditions are different for each person, as far as what sorts of games you excel in. Honestly, I wouldn't worry about it too much, as pretty much any table you sit at can be profitable. I only make an effort to avoid truly horrible tables (i.e. VPIP of 10) and don't really sweat the other details as much.

One thing that frustrated the hell out of me at first was that I'd occasionally encounter people literally playing 90% of their hands and winning $12,292 over 18,000 hands. And there I am, playing tight, aggressive poker and getting absolutely smoked, with big hand after hand getting cracked. Definitely pay attention to the fools with VPIPs over 40, but also realize that they can win, and win big, and can do so over what seems a lot of hands. They get punished in the long run if they keep playing but it's not your job (nor should it be your expectation) to be the one to punish them in the short turn. Try to isolate them when you can but in the end it's largely random in any one given session as to whether you take their money then and there.

Definitely agree on trying to avoid hit and run sessions, for all the reasons you mention. It's not fun to be up $1,000, keep playing, and end up showing a loss of -$1,000 on the day, but it's inevitable, and a good thing in the long run to experience, get under your belt, and absorb. Or, more simply, you'll never have a +$1,000 day if you stop every time you win $200.

I'd also suggest that you work out additional details up front with the wife, as far as what you discuss on the poker front, to what level you discuss it, etc. My wife is pretty cool about leaving that stuff to me, trusting that I'm investing poker profits well, using it to provide us with potential rewards, paying for trips, etc., but I didn't realize I was stressing her out by telling her things like "Whee, I just won $1,200 in that hour you were taking a nap!" I ws proud of it and wanted to share, feeling I was being a good provider and justifying my poker endeavors, but from her point of view is was unnecessary info, as her immediate response wasn't "Cool, do more of that!" but "Wow, that's a lot of money that'd buy a new refrigerator if you cashed out right now." I think it's definitely good to set up an arrangement that involves tangible rewards for your family from the poker pursuits, just make sure that you're both on the same page, as far as the level of detail involved and expectations and all that jazz.

Very helpful, Will. One thing that seems to be different for me live vs. online (although there should be no reason for this) is that I will absolutely get up and leave after a bad run live or request a table change but I won't do either online. Obviously, this makes no sense on its own. I just read the new Michael Craig book about the Andy Beal games, and I think it gives some good insight into how we should think. Gus Hansen, before his first (and only match) with Beal told (I think) Jennifer Harman, "I'm out if I get down $2mil (which, after getting up that much, he got down that much playing $100/200k). I would be interested in scurvy's thoughts on how to set up braking system.

Separately, Will, I'd be interested in your overall thoughts on October ring game. Can you pinpoint any positives and negatives that led to a flat month (throwing out Saturday)?